James Vowles, Williams Formula 1 boss, publicly supported Logan Sargeant to put weight behind the driver. The former insists that the team wants to keep him for the next year.
Since the summer break, Sargeant’s role in accidents at F1 tracks have cast shadows over his future at Williams. He crashed consecutively in past three out of four races. At the Dutch GP, he crashed heavily in qualifying while hitting barriers at Singapore and went off in a big accident in Japanese Q1.
Despite the bad luck, Vowles claims that team is willing to risk and help the driver settle in the team.
“Logan has very clear targets that he has to hit before the end of the season and we’re working with him continuously,” said Vowles.
“That’s the important point: we’re working with him. We want him to succeed, and we want him in the car next year. This is very much on us as well.
“We have taken someone straight from Formula 2 without any significant testing, put a day and a half in Bahrain in this car, and then wished them well on a season that has been awfully challenging for rookie drivers, full stop.”
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Sargeant’s qualifying crash in Japan, raised serious eyebrows on his future at the team. However, Vowles expressed trust that the data analysis weighs behind the driver. He claims that driver showed promising progress that Williams expected from him.
“There were some very positive signs to take out of it,” he said. “First and foremost, Logan is not on the same aerodynamic specification as Alex was.
“We have updates that are on Alex’s car that are not on Logan’s due to the amount of attrition we’ve had this year. So often when you see a performance offset, it’s not quite what it would seem on the timing pages.
“Furthermore, to that, if we look at the case of Suzuka, he did a build-up across the weekend. As he went into FP3. he did a time that matched Alex and, as we go into qualifying until the accident, he was overlaying line online within a 10th of Alex’s performance as well, at one of the trickiest circuits of the season.
“So, the progress is there in certain forms, but very clearly being marred by a number of other issues and accidents that have appeared as well.”
Vowles explicitly showed the team’s intention for the Sargeant. He claims that team is willing more to invest on him before giving up.
“We will continue to work with Logan and invest in Logan, as we want him to succeed,” he said. “He’s on a journey with us as Williams.
“We have a young driver programme that we will continue to invest in. Only at the point where all of us come to the conclusion that we’ve reached the end of that road will we make any decisions. But we’re nowhere near that yet.”
